#52: Super C

Released In: 1990
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami

      The evil alien warlord Red Falcon has returned to Earth once again with dreams of global domination. He has brainwashed the U.S. Army to do his bidding, as well as recruiting all sorts of evil aliens. Corporal Lance and Sergeant Bill, still relaxing after their original victory over Red Falcon, have been called back into action to defeat Falcon's armies once again... armies which now include their former comrades. Do they have the balls to do it? Fuck yeah!

Syd Lexia: I hope I get cancer, because then I can refer to my cancer as Super C. Then I'll be able to get away with it; people seem to get pretty pissed at me when I refer to *their* cancer as Super C. In many ways, Konami's first Contra sequel is a lot like cancer. It is a cruel, unforgiving trial, one that has claimed many lives. And just like cancer, you never really beat Super C... you merely survive. Seriously though, this game always annoyed the fucking hell out of me. It's significantly harder than the original Contra and the cheat code for 30 lives was replaced with a cheat code that only gives you TEN lives. What the fuck was that about? I beat many NES games in my childhood, but this was not one of them.

Valdronius: Like me, Super C is the middle child in its family, and as such, it kinda got the short end of the stick. It was one of the few NES games that I owned, so it has a special appeal to me, but Contra and Contra III: The Alien Wars tend to be considered much better games. Once you got the spread gun, this game was a cakewalk. Or if you were playing with a friend, you could give them the spread and wreak havoc with the flamethrower or laser. Unless you’re one of those people that needs a 30 life cheat to beat a game, you’ll enjoy Super C.

DarkMaze: I picked up Super C off the shelves of Kay-Bee Toys merely because it looked neat – I had never heard of it before. In fact, I hadn’t heard of regular "C" either, but I figured the "Super" version had to be better. It was a little while before I learned that the game was actually the sequel to Contra, which I had also never played – although that has long since been rectified. Super C quickly became one of my favorite totally impossible NES games.

I have no idea how long it took me to get past the first level, and I don't think I EVER made it past the second legitimately. And yet the gameplay was good and the apocalyptic atmosphere was appealing enough to keep me playing over and over. I’ve always been big on atmosphere in games. Incidentally, the plot involves killing a lot of soldiers who have been possessed by aliens. These aliens are so blatantly derivative of a particular sci-fi franchise that H.R. Giger must have been salivating with litigious hunger.

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